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The Luck of the Dudley Grahams / As Related in Extracts from Elizabeth Graham's Diary cover

The Luck of the Dudley Grahams / As Related in Extracts from Elizabeth Graham's Diary

Chapter 34: Sunday, March 1.
By Alice Calhoun Haines
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About This Book

The diary chronicles a struggling family who keep a boarding house after the father’s death, portraying everyday pressures, financial strain, and relations with a wealthy uncle. The narrator records domestic details and family personalities: a studious son who gives up personal plans to help, a mischievous younger daughter, a serious cousin with social advantages, and a disabled little brother, alongside a resolutely optimistic mother. Recollections include the late father’s unfinished flying-machine in the attic and how private ambitions, modest inventions, thrift, and incoming boarders shape the family’s hopes, tensions, and loyalties.

Sunday, March 1.

Geoffrey desperately ill. He is delirious the greater part of the time, or lies in a heavy stupour.

Poor little Ernie, who goes every day for news, crept up to his door yesterday morning, crouched outside, and listened. Geof was singing in a queer, hoarse voice:—

“Forty years on, when afar and asunder,
Parted are those who are singing to-day,
When you look back and forgetfully wonder,
What you were like in your work and your play....”

followed by snatches of the Eton Boating Song. Then he would break off to shout football signals:—

“25, 39, 15—Left-end and Tackle over! 19, 56, 22—You fellows, there! What are you trying for? 19’s a bluff! Can’t you remember what’s told you,—confound it!”

Interspersed with muttered snatches of German, and Latin paradigms. “And, oh,” mourned Ernie, pathetically, “we’ve done dear Geof a great injustice, Elizabeth. It’s amazing all that boy knows! He repeated lines and lines of Cæsar;—I only wish Haze could have heard him!—and strings of irregular French verbs, and then began to say the Capitals of the States, and exports and imports! It was simply wonderful! I felt so proud!”

But mother and I are frightened. Geof never would have known such things in his right mind, we feel sure; and we suspect that Dr. Porter fears cerebral complications. A consultation was held yesterday, and a second nurse has been engaged to relieve Miss Barron.